Raquel Guimaraes is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at IIASA with support from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). She is hosted by the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA), Risk and Vulnerability (RISK), and World Population (POP) programs. Dr. Guimaraes is currently on sabbatical leave from her appointment as an Adjunct Professor in the Economics Department at the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), where she carries out research on, as well as teaching, economic demography, development microeconomics and applied microeconometrics.

In her research at IIASA, Dr. Guimaraes aims to contribute to the extant literature and to policy-making by offering a case study from Brazil, examining whether and how individual exposure to floods did or not induce affected migration in a setting with intense urbanization, the city of Governador Valadares, in the State of Minas Gerais. To elucidate the role of vulnerability at the household-level in mediating the relationship between mobility and floods, she will rely on causal models and simulation analysis. Her study is aligned with and will have support from, the Brazilian Network for Research on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima), which is an important pillar in support of R&D activities of the Brazilian National Climate Change Plan.

Dr. Guimaraes graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2007 with degrees in economics. She completed an MA degree in International Comparative Education at Stanford University (2011) and earned a doctorate in demography from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 2014.

Charlotte is an International PhD graduate originally from New Zealand who first came to ASU to pursue her PhD in Anthropology in Aug 2013, thanks to receiving a Science and Innovation Scholarship through the Fulbright Program. She holds a BS majoring in Genetics and a BA majoring in Anthropology from Otago University, New Zealand. She received her Masters in Anthropology in May 2015 and her PhD in Anthropology in 2022 both from ASU. Her main areas of interest are Human Migration, Migration Decision Making, and Environmental Perceptions.

At present she is an Assistant Research Scientist with the School of Complex Adaptive Systems at ASU where she is primarily focused on her roles as the administrative coordinator for CoMSES.NET and The Open Modeling Foundation. She is also adjunct Anthropology faculty at Phoenix College, and Chandler-Gilbert Community College teaching various undergraduate anthropology courses. She is deeply interested in how computational tools and technologies can be used to explore complex adaptive systems, explore possible futures, and better inform policy and decision makers at the leading edge of change.